The saddest part of the Harper aftermath? Not all of his ideas were terrible.

iPolitics Insights

It was Dec. 11, 2013 — a day after Parliament had recessed for the Christmas break — when Canada Post slipped out its announcement. Clearly, everybody involved was hoping no one would notice.

There was no news conference, no technical briefing for the media — just a news release from the Crown corporation announcing the end of urban door-to-door mail delivery and a 35 per cent increase in the cost of a first-class stamp.

The elimination of door-to-door delivery for some urban residents (it was to continue as before for apartment dwellers) was to be rolled out over five years, but Canada Post clearly had no idea how community mailboxes designed for suburban areas would work in densely-populated cities. It didn’t matter. They’d figure it out later. If municipalities weren’t happy, they’d have to live with it.

When asked later about the impact the suspension of home delivery would have on seniors, Canada Post CEO Deepak Chopra said he was certain they’d welcome the exercise (this, from a guy supposed to be in the customer service business).

And so, what might have been received as a logical policy decision based on an inexorable decline in first-class mail was turned — through political incompetence — into a mess which haunts us still; the Liberal government recently announced another review of Canada Post’s operations, as well as parliamentary hearings.

Stephen Harper may have all but disappeared from public view, but we’re still coping with the fallout from his secretive, indifferent, fundamentally undemocratic approach to government. Under Harper, all decisions were made in the Prime Minister’s Office, often by Harper alone. And the government he led never felt the need to explain what it was doing, to consult with stakeholders, to convince non-believers that its policy decisions made any sense — to do politics, in other words.

As a result, even fundamentally sound public policy decisions were botched because the Harper government never troubled to make a case for them — allowing the Liberals under Justin Trudeau to get away with shedding good policies that, while they might be unpopular, are still important for the future of this country.

The increase in the age of eligibility for Old Age Security to 67 from 65 is another classic example. What do we remember about this policy announcement? Only this: that it was made by Harper at a speech in Davos, Switzerland — not Parliament — then unceremoniously shoehorned into an omnibus budget bill a few months later.

Educating the public on difficult issues, treating voters like thinking adults, trying to build consensus — these things never played a part in Harper’s approach to government.

Only after the budget was presented did the government even provide an estimate of how much money would be saved once the change in the retirement age was phased in. At no point did it explain how the higher OAS qualifying age would be coordinated with other parts of the pension system like the Canada Pension Plan, or discuss with the provinces the impact on the social-welfare system. Again, the hope in the PMO was that a fundamental change in policy affecting generations to come could be slipped by the public without discussion.

But because the case was never made for the change in the first place, the Trudeau government was able to reverse the decision and return to the retirement age of 65 — despite the fact that it’s a short-sighted policy shift at a time when people are living longer, and when other industrialized nations are increasing their own retirement ages.

A more sensible approach for Harper would have been to try to educate the public on the difficult choices made necessary by this demographic shift. His government could have appointed a Royal Commission led by eminent Canadians to conduct independent research, hold hearings across the country and engage as many Canadians as possible. Or he could have asked MPs to do it.

The results of such a study likely would have pointed to the need for a higher retirement age. Many people would have remained staunchly opposed to the idea, no doubt. But at least the public would have understood why he was doing what he was doing.

That same kind of approach would have been useful when it came to Canada Post. Instead of conducting parliamentary hearings and engaging MPs on the issue, Canada Post hired the Conference Board of Canada to do a study and run its own consultation, boasting later that it received 3,006 online comments and 868 letters. Wow!

Educating the public on difficult issues, treating voters like thinking adults, trying to build consensus — these things never played a part in Harper’s approach to government. For him, power was a zero-sum game; for the prime minister to be right, everyone opposed to him had to be wrong, utterly wrong — or merely irrelevant. Once he had control of Parliament, he assumed he owned Parliament, along with the Senate and the public service — his to use however he wished until the next election.

This week, Public Services Minister Judy Foote announced an independent review of Canada Post and parliamentary hearings on the future of the corporation. She’s refusing to shut the door to anything — including a reversal of the Liberals’ promise to maintain door-to-door delivery.

OK then — let’s have a frank discussion of how we deal with the move away from letter mail in the digital age. If the postal workers union’s idea of turning the post office into a bank is unrealistic, let’s make them defend their position. Let’s find out what the alternatives are to community mailboxes. Let’s ask why, if urban dwellers are to be forced to walk for their mail, no changes have been proposed to costly rural mail delivery.

We talk, we argue, then we act. That’s democracy. Prime ministers who refuse to do politics shouldn’t be surprised to see their good ideas kicked to the curb.

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